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Less Is Not More When it Comes to Dental Patients
The lead article in an edition of the Dental Practice Report was titled, “Overhead: How to Manage Your Most Menacing Costs.” In this well-written article by Imtiaz Manji, B.S.C., great detail is presented about keeping overhead under control to maximize profits. While this information is important, in my opinion, overhead is one of the smaller issues in achieving high productivity in dentistry. The big issue should be no secret, but it must be.
Many dentists have been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of managed care (sometimes called mangled care or mis-managed care). And it is true that instead of practicing a full-fledged profession, we have been forced into a quasi-profession, where emphasis is placed on speed of delivery and mass productivity rather than quality care. I see many recent graduates from dental schools who have sacrificed themselves to be offered to the big-volume, doc-in-the-box dentistry businesses where they are paid according to the number of surfaces of silver fillings they can install each day. This type of dentistry isn't really about people. It's about things.
This type of dentistry is just too much like changing mufflers or changing oil under the hood of a car. Rather, we need to be loving, caring, gentle dentists helping scared, sensitive, young and old patients to preserve God's greatest gift: The mouth and teeth.
So, if you want to be really creative and productive in the practice of dentistry, remember: Around each and every tooth is wrapped a scared, sensitive, aesthetically motivated person who will be a constant source of great referrals to the dentist who treats them more like an individual human being with feelings. Really treat the people well and you will be unable to keep them away.
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